FAQ

DBT is a type of therapy created by Dr. Marsha Linehan in the late 1980s. It’s designed to help people handle strong emotions and build better relationships. While it was first developed for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), it’s now used to treat other issues like anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, and addiction.

DBT is all about learning practical skills in four main areas:

Mindfulness:

• Helps you stay present and really tune into your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without judging them.

• It’s about observing what’s happening around and inside you with a clear, open mind.

Distress Tolerance:

• Teaches you how to cope with tough emotions and situations without doing anything harmful.

• Includes techniques for accepting reality, soothing yourself, and handling crises calmly.

Emotion Regulation:

• Focuses on understanding and managing your emotions better.

• You learn how to recognize and label your feelings, increase positive emotions, and reduce emotional ups and downs in the long term.

Interpersonal Effectiveness:

• Aims to improve communication in all types of relationships. 

• Helps you assert your needs, keep your self-respect, and handle conflicts more effectively.

• Skills learned here can help improve existing relationships and develop new ones.

First and foremost this is a group by and for members of the queer community (allies also welcome!). With that said, all sorts of people can benefit from a DBT skills group - especially those who:

• Experience symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, or PTSD

• Find it difficult to regulate their emotions 

• Find it challenging to understand their emotions and what their needs are 

• Struggle to communicate with others and find it difficult to create and maintain boundaries. 

• Want to develop or strengthen their ability to cope with distress

• Want to improve their relationships

• Have a desire for personal growth 

This group is facilitated by Danielle Nori, RSW. As part of our Counselling Intern Program, each of our students will support in facilitating a module. For more information on our Counselling Intern Program, please click this link.

These groups run more like a class where we focus on one or two specific skills from whatever module we’re in at the time. Groups have somewhere between 6-10 people and run for 1.5hrs. 

A typical timeline looks something like this: 

Mindfulness activity (5-10 minutes)

Group check in (5-10 mins)

Last week skills review (15 mins)

New skill introduced (10-15 minutes) 

Break (10 mins)

New skill learning/practice/discussion (25 mins)

Checkout (5 mins) 

All content will be covered in 7 months. As this runs as an “open group” everyone starts somewhere different, but content is repeated again so you’ll cover all the modules. Folks with a BPD diagnosis are recommended to complete the content twice.  

We require an initial intake session which will cost $150.

After the intake the fees are $85/per weekly session, with monthly payments in advance.

Sliding scale options are available, please email danielle@burnbrightcounselling.ca to discuss further.

Yourself! Fidgets! Notebooks! Snacks! Really we encourage you to come as you are, if you need a notebook, great, if not - also great! Most things are welcome - All we ask is that it does not become a distraction to either yourself or other group members. 

Our clinic does come stocked with fidgets galore, tea, and water.

E-transfer, VISA, Mastercard, AMEX, Visa Debit.

The DBT group is held in person, at our office. Our address is 203-4480 W Saanich Rd, Victoria, BC, V8Z 3E9. The office is located on the second floor, with stair and elevator access. There are 2 single stall gendered bathrooms and a single stall gender neutral bathroom located on our floor.